North Austin's Athlos Leadership Academy under construction in August.

In the far reaches of North Austin, with Williamson County looming just across the street, the capital city’s newest charter school was still a construction site in late August. Scaffolding wrapped the large building as dozens of construction workers clambered up and down. More workers paced the rooftop, hurrying to finish the job and get students inside the new Athlos Leadership Academy for the new school year.

Like other Athlos campuses across the country, the school has big white pillars, a stately cupola and Monticello-esque wings suggesting a classical place of learning. Athlos notes in promotional materials that the Georgian architecture is designed to “evoke a patriotic feel.” In the weight room and on its basketball court and indoor turf field, students will be trained in Athlos’ signature physical fitness and character development program. For school-shopping parents, the school compares impressively to, say, the Round Rock Independent School District’s boxy, brick Wells Branch Elementary a few blocks away.

Thanks to the quirky way charter schools are regulated, this was a peculiar summer for Idaho-based Athlos. For even as it opened its seventh charter school in Texas, with thousands of students in its programs, state regulators also denied an Athlos Academy charter application—for the second time in three years.

If you’re, say, a parent or a student trying to choose between public schools, that might sound confusing. But it makes perfect sense if you work within the charter system, where you know a school’s name only says so much about who runs it.

News of the state’s rejection was a frustration, but not a deal-killer, for Athlos Academies because its schools also piggyback onto preexisting charters. A state charter for Athlos would’ve let the organization grow even faster in Texas, and perhaps most importantly, given it more of the all-important cachet it takes to succeed in the charter world.

Combined with a partner called The Charter School Fund, Athlos represents something new in the school reform movement: a developer that lets existing charter schools grow beyond their wildest dreams, then absorbs them into its family of campuses with a unique brand built on leadership and fitness.

Athlos schools have earned high marks in other states, and Texas lawmakers have made it clear that they want more high-performing charters to move in from out-of-state—so in many ways, this looked like it could have been Athlos’ year to get a charter of its own.

In Athlos Academy’s pitch before state regulators in July, its would-be board of directors made their case with a sense of urgency. The school’s Dallas-based board enthusiastically told Texas Education Agency officials how the Athlos model—”Athlos” is Greek for “feat” or “contest”—would turn out healthy, self-confident students more likely to succeed in the classroom.

“If you were driving down the road and you saw a car accident, would you stop and intervene?” Board member Todd Whitthorne was an especially fiery evangelist. “What I have seen in my lifetime, in the past 50 years, our public health numbers are frightening,” said Whitthorne, a motivational speaker and health consultant who promotes “happy pills” for workplace productivity. “They’re absolutely frightening, and I don’t believe that the way we’re operating right now in an obesogenic environment is sustainable.”

The board’s plan was ambitious: 15 campuses around Dallas-Fort Worth with a student body that would grow from 2,600 to 15,000 students within five years. (Charter school enrollment in Texas is just over 200,000 today.) The board chairman, Eddie Conger, runs another North Texas charter school, Independent Leadership Texas, that has grown fast in its first few years after partnering with Athlos. Conger spoke passionately about the transformative power of Athlos, and how many more children they’d reach with a separate charter: “If you were driving down the road and you saw a car accident, would you stop and intervene?”

But regulators seemed perplexed by connections between The Charter School Fund (the likely new landlord for the schools), Athlos Academies and a nonprofit called Complete Kids Inc., which would be allowed to nominate some replacements to the Athlos Texas board. All three shared the same downtown Boise address, along with the Hawkins Companies, a major real estate developer.

“Not only does it concern me when an out-of-state is going to be nominating your board,” TEA legal counsel Karen Johnson told the applicants, “but we have a new state law that says that a majority of all board members need to be qualified voters, which the [attorney general] says means Texas residents.” Johnson’s concerns touched on a delicate balance built into last year’s overhaul of Texas’ charter school law: while lawmakers wanted to attract out-of-state charters to Texas, they were also wary of handing control of public money to interests outside the state.

And the new Athlos school already planned to send a lot of money to Idaho: an estimated $442,395 in the school’s first year—2 percent of its state funding—to license the Athlos curriculum (with 15,000 students, the total could rise to $2.5 million a year) and $52 million over the first five years—about 18 percent of its funding—to rent from The Charter School Fund. (Charter schools’ facility costs vary widely, but, according to Texas Charter Schools Association spokeswoman Tracy Young, consultants often advise charters to keep lease costs under 20 percent.)

Mavis Knight, a Dallas Democrat on the State Board of Education, tells the Observer the arrangement just seemed odd to her, especially the board nominating process. “My mind can’t wrap around why it is necessary for two separate entities to nominate board members of another entity,” she says. (Along with Complete Kids, the nonprofit behind Independent Leadership of Texas would also nominate new Athlos Texas board members.) “Sometimes you just have to listen to your inner self, and my inner self was still not satisfied.”

TEA denied the Athlos application for “multiple reasons,” according to spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe, including an insufficient budget for “required activities”—board members had promised their fundraising skills would help make up the difference—and too many other issues the school would have to work out before opening.

Joseph Hoffer, a San Antonio attorney who represented the Athlos Texas board, tells the Observer the decision was disappointing, and a little mysterious. “The states’s talking about scaling [out-of-state charters], yet they’re worried about corporate operators coming in that they can’t control,” Hoffer says. “They say that’s what they want, and then they don’t approve it. … The commissioner was told by the Legislature that he could grant up to 10 charters, and he’s not doing that.”

Politically, the mood does seem right in Texas for an out-of-state operation with a good reputation. Earlier this year, Education Commissioner Michael Williams went to great lengths to let Arizona-based Great Hearts Academies expand into Dallas despite a veto from the State Board of Education. And according to emails obtained through state open records laws, Gov. Rick Perry has been especially interested in out-of-state charter applicants. “What is the big hold up for recruiting out of state charters form y’all perspective,” Perry’s education policy adviser Whitney Broughton asked TEA in March.

The Legacy Traditional School in Gilbert, Arizona, uses the Athlos curriculum and was built by The Charter School Fund.

Part of Athlos’ trouble may be that, unlike Great Hearts or Arizona-based BASIS Charter Schools, it can’t claim an academic track record of its own. Though it may be hard to tell from the outside, each Athlos school—like North Austin’s Athlos Leadership Academy—is actually an independent charter that licenses the Athlos curriculum.

“It’s like they’re the hand and then Athlos becomes the glove,” Hoffer explains.

But University of California at Berkeley professor Janelle Scott—whose research covers the growing charter school market—says Athlos’ promotional material doesn’t make the distinction clear. “It’s at least misleading. As I was reading the Athlos website, it does appear to me that those were schools under their management,” Scott says. “They don’t say they’re not the holders of the charter. The charter holder is the one that has fiduciary and pedagogical responsibility for the school.”

“We have a solution to the largest obstacle in bringing market-driven education to scale, which we feel strongly is the only way to transform education.” Licensing the Athlos curriculum tends to entail a total rebranding: new school name, new marketing style, and a place on Athlos’ list of schools, all of which can make it hard to tell, from the outside, whose charter school it is. Hoffer compares it to franchising with McDonald’s. A similar arrangement lets the online chain K12, Inc., operate in Texas. As a for-profit firm, K12 could never get a charter of its own here, but it can simply contract with a local charter-holder instead. Watch one of their ads on TV, and you’d never know the difference. Should K12’s school perform poorly on state tests—as K12’s Texas campus did for years—it can simply take its business to another charter-holder and start over with a clean slate. That’s exactly what it did in 2011 when it jumped from Southwest Schools to Lewisville-based Responsive Education Solutions.

Athlos and The Charter School Fund don’t dictate an academic curriculum but they provide something more concrete—literally—than K12: an impressive school facility to complement whatever a charter does in its classrooms. Along the way, Athlos extends its message, grows its brand and pads its bottom line. As the nationwide charter school market grows, so does the market for creative arrangements like this. Charter-specific firms occupy a small but growing niche in the real estate world, alongside the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund—as in Andre Agassi—and EPR Properties, which also owns movie theaters and water parks.

855 Broad Street in Boise, home to Hawkins Companies, Athlos Acadmies, The Charter School Fund and Complete Kids, Inc.

Athlos began in 2006, according to its site, when an Idaho dentist named Ryan Van Alfen sold his practice and teamed with a real estate developer named Jason Kotter. They set up Athlos Academies—a nonprofit—and teamed with Hawkins Companies, a developer of ubiquitous retail spots like Walgreens stores and strip malls, to create The Charter School Fund.

Like Hawkins, the fund is a for-profit corporation. But Hoffer—to whom Van Alfen referred our interview request—makes a distinction here: “They’re not a nonprofit, they’re a social venture. They’re not a developer either,” Hoffer says.

In Texas, charter schools don’t get public funding to lease buildings or build new ones; finding and paying for facilities can be one of the biggest stresses in running a charter school. Hoffer says The Charter School Fund helps alleviate that stress. “What they bring is unique in that they’ve designed the facilities around the educational model, and they’ve also brought in the investors—they’ve leveraged their resources to bring in the investors so a charter school can also have a facility.”

Scott, the Berkeley researcher, says it’s common for players in the charter school market to work through a nonprofit arm. “People are still skeptical of having for-profits in education,” she says, so there’s a P.R. benefit to appearing charitable. Scott says The Charter School Fund’s marriage of real estate and physical education seems unique. “But what is common is this idea of a hybridized organization—an arm that’s nonprofit, an arm that’s for-profit, and those arms kind of taking care of teach other.”

On its website, The Charter School Fund claims a record of “$324 million invested in market driven education.” And Kotter and Van Alfen sound like true believers in the power of the private sector to improve public schools. Van Alfen explains in a 2013 Idaho Business Review article:

“We have a solution to the largest obstacle in bringing market-driven education to scale, which we feel strongly is the only way to transform education. We like to challenge the status quo; it drives me crazy to see how this education topic has been demagogued to death. No, it’s not about the kids. It’s about unions protecting union members.

[…]

“Jason helped pioneer a financial model that worked. We develop a structure, lease it to the 501(c)(3) charter school until they stabilize with their enrollment financially, and then they buy it from us. Then we just roll that forward in not-for-profit fashion, into the next project. We bring the equity; we personally guarantee the debt. Nobody is taking more risk on a project’s success than we are.”

As stewards of public money, charters must typically submit their construction projects for competitive bidding. (Another charter school chain, Harmony Public Schools, has drawn fire for using the same few Turkish-owned contractors outside the usual bidding process.) But by leasing a finished product from The Charter School Fund, schools come in too late to worry about who did the work. These projects tend to come with a consistent cast of supporting players, including Idaho-based Pacific Properties and Engineered Structures, Inc. The campus plans often come from Boise-based BRS Architects.

Gymnasiums, tracks and fields are luxuries many charter schools can’t afford, but at the new Jubilee schools they’ll be integral to the Athlos program. All schools—charter or not—send lots of public money into the private sector. But thanks to their small enrollments and freedom to experiment, charters have become a gateway to the education market for all sorts of new players with unorthodox arrangements.

Van Alfen has explained the Athlos character curriculum was developed with California-based Velocity Sports Performance, a nationwide chain of personal training franchises that maintains a connection to new Athlos schools, and helps to recruit and screen coaches for Athlos schools. Coaches may also use the school gym after-hours for private, fee-based training sessions, according to news stories from Brownsville, Texas, and Arizona. Velcocity and its corporate partners get a privileged position within the schools: Velocity’s website even advertises its gym locations at charter school addresses. The walls of some Athlos school gyms bear a big Velocity Sports Performance logo and according to one handbook, the only corporate logos staff can wear are those of Velocity or its partners like Under Armour. (Athlos Apparel, which Kotter and Van Alfen also own, sells the student uniforms.)

It’s been eight years since Van Alfen sold his dental practice, and despite the recent rejection in Texas, his gamble may finally be paying off. Athlos’ school network spans three states and promises more growth soon. In fall 2011, the Legacy Traditional Schools network in suburban Phoenix opened the Athlos Leadership Academy, the first of at least five campuses they’ve now built with The Charter School Fund. Last fall, New Visions Academy—one of Minnesota’s oldest charter schools—moved into a grand new building on a grassy hill built by The Charter School Fund, then reopened as Athlos Leadership Academy. A group led by a dentist and a former dental assistant school owner has applied to open a new Athlos charter in Nampa, Idaho, in fall 2015.

Like most charter schools, Jubilee Academic Center started small. Its first campus opened in 2000, with 60 students inside a San Antonio church. Each time the school added a campus it could fit another 200 or 300 students, but growing Jubilee was always a delicate balancing act. Charter schools in Texas don’t get public money for rent or construction. Many rely on grants to cover the cost of new facilities, but Jubilee director Tom Koger was wary of the influence outside foundations might expect in exchange for their money.

Instead, when Koger and the Jubilee board wanted to go big, they enlisted The Charter School Fund, which agreed to build three new school buildings, each far bigger than Jubilee could build on its own—including Jubilee’s Athlos Leadership Academy in North Austin. Jubilee would lease the new buildings, and hopefully buy them someday. The fund, in turn, would use money from the sale to build more schools, which Jubilee could rent to accommodate even more students.

On the same day Jubilee’s board approved the deal in January 2014, it voted to boost its enrollment from 5,550 to 17,276.

Gymnasiums, tracks and fields are luxuries many charter schools can’t afford, but at these new schools they’re integral to the Athlos program, which Jubilee also decided to license. At Jubilee, according to Koger, the connection between The Charter School Fund and Athlos is incidental—both programs fit alongside what his school was already doing. “Jubilee’s always had an emphasis on character … so we feel like it’s win-win for us,” Koger says. Plus, the real estate terms were more favorable than what Jubilee could get anywhere else, which Koger chalks up to a sense of mission among the folks in Boise.

“The thing with these guys from The Charter School Fund,” Koger says, “once you get to know them, they truly are on a crusade to stamp out diabetes and obesity.”

Hoffer says he’s looking forward to next year’s charter school class, when Athlos can once again apply for its own charter from Texas. But until then, Athlos already has more schools in Texas than any other state, with three new Jubilee Academy campuses under the Athlos banner this year, and ILTexas campuses “powered by Athlos” in North Texas. Thousands of Texas students will learn the Athlos model this year, from the Rio Grande Valley to the Dallas suburbs, in big new schools built by The Charter School Fund. With or without the state’s help, the Athlos crusade marches on.

Correction Nov. 5: This article has been corrected—Wells Branch Elementary is in Round Rock ISD, not Austin ISD.

In the immortal words of Kris Kristofferson, “There’s no need to watch the bridges that we’re burning.” Plenty of time for that before November! For now, let’s just relax and enjoy the good times.

After all, it’s football season! With all the divisive strife in the world today, it’s nice to know that we can all kick back together on a Sunday afternoon, let everyone celebrate their fandom as they like, and may the best team win. A time to put politics aside!

SHOT: Today Sen. Davis Said She Has Been “Cheering For The Cowboys” Since She Was Young And Hasn’t Stopped Since.

[…]

CHASER: In August Sen. Davis’ Daughter Said Her And Her Mother Were Both “Big Fans” Of The New England Patriots.

That’s Greg Abbott’s campaign dinging Davis for daring to cheer for the Dallas Cowboys and for an entirely different team on some other occasions. Who knows? Maybe even at the same time! On any given Sunday, Wendy Davis, alone in the universe, may hope to see both the Cowboys and the Patriots win their football games.

Abbott spokesman Matt Hirsch said the attorney general favors two Texas teams: the Cowboys and the Texans.

[…]

“Either way, he’s no fan of liberal New England politics or their football team,” Hirsch said.

At Texas Monthly, Dan Solomon takes a deep dive into the many ways this fight is “silly,” but also notes how easily politicians can screw up the seemingly simple “local football team pander.” The funniest thing about the affair might be seeing Southern Methodist University political science professor Cal Jillson trotted out to provide the following expert analysis:

“There are more serious issues the candidates need to focus on.”

This week also brought us Greg Abbott’s new campaign ad, “Garage,” in which the gubernatorial candidate recalls his difficult training after being partially paralyzed, which included tackling eight floors of a parking garage in his wheelchair to build upper-body strength. Abbott could be running for governor here, or he might be trying to sell you some Under Armour.

Abbott conveys this simple and inspirational message about how he faces personal challenges, then makes a broad, anodyne leap to the challenges we all face as Texans.

“Just one more. I see life that way, and that’s how I’ll govern Texas.”

If only Rick Perry had used that one after his first term! Or his second!

But seriously, who could find fault in a message like this? And what everyday setting could be more unimpeachable than a parking garage? What could anyone possibly find to rebut in this unassailably upbeat little nugget of bumper-sticker-grade inspiration?

Take it away, Rebecca Acuña:

“If you had told me Greg Abbott was running an ad titled ‘Garage’, I would have assumed it would be an apology to the woman he sided against on the Texas Supreme Court after she was brutally raped in a parking garage.”

Acuña, a Davis campaign spokeswoman, is referring specifically to a case from 1999. The content of Abbott’s ad left little room for attack, but the name… oh, the name! Sure, using that one innocuous word as a cudgel may strike some as a bit of a stretch, but only until you think of all the wild rebuttals that didn’t make the cut. You know who else spent a lot of time in a concrete bunker?

Maybe Abbott can make a sport of this, and challenge Davis by giving his next ads even blander one-word titles. “Satchel.” “Receptacle.” “Spork.” This campaign’s getting hot already!

A contingent from San Antonio's Edgewood ISD at the Save Texas Schools rally in 2013.

A state district judge’s long-awaited ruling on Texas’ school finance case—siding with the more than two thirds of Texas school districts that sued the state claiming that our school funding system is unconstitutional—won’t be the final word on the matter. The Texas Supreme Court will ultimately decide the case, and if history is any guide, there’ll be another lawsuit like it within a decade.

But state District Judge John Dietz’s 383-page opinion in the case is important not only because it could be a step toward a better school system, but also because it covers so much ground. Backed by dozens of expert opinions, the ruling touches on the makeup of the student body to where Texas gets its teachers, from full-day bilingual learning to standardized test scores. Dietz’s ruling is an authoritative, exhaustive discourse on the state of Texas’ schools today.

The Legislature has been raising the standards for Texas students and requiring schools to provide more elaborate programs—talking big in the Capitol about the state’s high expectations—all while refusing to give schools the resources needed to meet those standards. It’s time, Dietz writes, that the state put its money where its mouth is.

Not enough money?! Come on, I heard that Texas’ school spending has never been higher.

That’s what a state witness said, too, showing that total spending—including construction—is way up since 2000. Dietz disagreed, saying it’s better to focus on “operations” spending, which has a greater impact on the classroom.

In constant 2004 dollars, Texas spent $7,128 per student a decade ago, peaked at $7,415 in 2009 (thanks to federal stimulus money), and bottomed out in 2013. Contrary to what you might have heard, Texas spends $300 less per student than it did a decade ago.

But just a few years ago, the Texas Supreme Court said we were spending enough.

All the new students we’ve added need new school buildings too, but Dietz said districts can’t raise enough for new construction. To pay for the growth, they’ve had to dip into money they should be spending in the classroom.

They can deal with it! It’s not like school’s getting any harder.

Oh, but it is. Since the last school finance ruling in 2005, the Legislature has added an expectation that schools prepare students for college, and begun using a harder new test, STAAR, that’s designed to assess a higher level of learning than the old test, TAKS. Both sides in the case agreed this was a “dramatic increase” in what students are expected to do.

Even last year’s House Bill 5, which cut the number of tests and added “career-ready” alternatives to the college-ready standard, doesn’t change that. In fact, Dietz says, no state witness could point to any cost savings from the new law.

I dunno, you look around, seems like schools are doing just fine.

Dietz disagrees. Considering the low pass rates on STAAR, and the fact they haven’t risen much in the test’s first years, he sounds worried. “The failure rates on STAAR constitute a current crisis in the education system,” he writes. Dietz also draws a connection between the flat scores on STAAR, and the lack of new funding for schools. Earlier this week, Education Commissioner Michael Williams said scores hadn’t grown because “we haven’t jumped high enough in the classroom”; Dietz suggests classrooms haven’t been given the resources to allow for that jump.

Even the state’s school ratings set the bar too low to guarantee the “general diffusion of knowledge” required by the constitution. Dietz says a district can have “incredibly poor performance results” on STAAR and still win the state’s “met standard” rating. According to other measures, Texas is losing ground to other states—a new development since the Supreme Court last heard a school finance case. One of the state’s own witnesses called Texas’ graduation rate “a disaster.”

OK, but I already got my diploma and I don’t have kids. Who cares?! Ron Paul 2016!

For one thing, this is bad news for students who won’t graduate because they’re not passing tests—disproportionately poor students and students with limited English. Dietz writes: “Waiting for school districts to make slow progress on improving the passing rate is not an option for the hundreds of thousands of ninth and tenth graders who are no longer on track to graduate because of their performance on [end of course] exams.”

You may not see much need for an properly funded public education system, but the constitution disagrees—and for good reason, Dietz says: “Texas’s future depends heavily on whether it meets the constitutional obligation to provide a general diffusion of knowledge such that all students have a meaningful opportunity to graduate college and career ready.”

So what, we just spend money forever?

Dietz acknowledges it’s tough to pin down a precise dollar amount for the proper cost of Texas’ education, but he disagrees with the state’s argument that it’s impossible to determine.

For argument’s sake, Dietz defines adequate somewhere in a range of $6,500 to $7,000 per student. By the lowest reasonable estimate he heard, Dietz says Texas needs to be pay at least $6,404 per student—around $800 more than it does today. Of Texas’ 1,020 school districts, only the 259 richest ones can cover the cost of an adequate education within legal tax rates.

But I heard the Lege replaced the 2011 education cuts last year.

The trial began as school districts were coming to grips with the $5.4 billion school budget cuts the Legislature passed in 2011; after the Lege replaced $3.5 billion of that in 2013, Dietz reopened the case to get updated testimony. But in his ruling he said the Legislature’s extra spending was “modest indeed—and plainly insufficient to satisfy constitutional standards.” Four hundred-eighty-eight school districts—almost half the districts in the state—are still worse off than they were before the 2011 cuts.

And the underlying problems with the funding formula remain.

But didn’t the Lege fix school finance in 2006?

Weeeellll… Not so much. In fact, Dietz says lawmakers only exacerbated problems in the system. Back then when the Supreme Court told the Legislature to fix school finance, Rick Perry took the opportunity to cut local property taxes and replace them with a new business tax that some warned would never make up the difference in the budget. Guess what happened? It didn’t cover the difference! Hence the multi-billion-dollar deficit the Legislature faces with every new session.

Lawmakers set up a delicate house of cards in 2006 that’s since gone all to hell, and the problems have even affected Texas’ wealthiest schools. Dietz notes that the current system makes it hard for so-called property-rich districts to raise more money, thanks to idiosyncrasies like target revenue.

More like off-target revenue, am I right?? I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Dietz’s opinion deals necessarily with some pretty obscure issues in the school budget, “target revenue” among them. Target revenue, or “ASATR” (which is seriously pronounced “ass-a-tar”), is a good example of how the Lege backtracked in a subtle way the last time it tried to fix the system. As Abby Rapoport explained in a 2011 Observer piece on school finance, target revenue was meant as a stopgap measure to ensure districts didn’t lose money too quickly as the state transitioned to its new funding system.

Instead of reducing the target revenue rate last session, the lege raised it from 92.35 to 92.63 to help ease the pain of those 2011 budget cuts. Under today’s system, target revenue would end in TK, creating a steep cliff for some school budgets. Dietz does not have a high opinion of how Target Revenue—and other neat legislative tricks from 2006, like “golden” and “copper pennies” for tax rates—have played out.

Yikes. Well maybe they’ll do the right thing next time!

It’s unlikely, but the Legislature could even take quick action next year to fix the system without a directive from the Supreme Court. The Houston Chronicledetailed a few possible outcomes over the weekend.

But hardly any red-blooded Republican lawmakers want to be seen growing the budget, so it’ll most likely take a firm Supreme Court ruling to force them to do so. Making the system more equitable for all districts, and fixing the local tax rates, will be an incredibly complex proposition that’s bound to hurt some folks and help others. It’s a little hard to imagine this Legislature—full of so many new members—coming to terms on a deal this contentious.

The courts do have a way to make lawmakers come to terms, and they’ve done it before, by threatening to cut off the school system if lawmakers can’t fund it correctly.

But won’t schools do better if we just fire all the bad teachers?

No. Or at least, according to Dietz, there’s no evidence that doing so would improve schools as much as giving them the proper resources. Plus, how do you decide which teachers are bad? After hearing from one of the nation’s leading proponents of this strategy, Stanford University researcher Eric Hanushek, Dietz wasn’t sold on its potential to turn the whole school system around.

So did Dietz buy every argument the plaintiffs threw at him?

No. One new wrinkle in this suit was a “taxpayer equity” claim from the Equity Center—essentially that, as a taxpayer, your return on your property taxes varies depending on where you live. Dietz didn’t go for this one, though he didn’t explain much about why.

Dietz also shot down arguments from both of the new plaintiffs’ groups in this trial. One, a charter school group, argued that the school finance system is unfair because it allows traditional districts to raise money just for facilities, but charters don’t get any money for buildings. (But because the funding for charter schools is based on an average of the state’s funding for ISDs, he ruled that charter funding is inadequate too.)

Another group, led by former state Rep. Kent Grusendorf and the Texas Association of Business, argued that the system should include a guarantee that districts spend money efficiently. Dietz was unswayed by arguments that schools are, broadly speaking, spending wastefully. Had Dietz ruled differently on their claims, he could have opened the door to an unlimited number of charters, or even school vouchers.

This sounds like it was a lot of work! Are the lawyers going to get paid?

Um, yes.

One of this case’s many exciting twists is that school boards had to devote scarce public resources to teams of lawyers to argue on the schools’ behalf. If Dietz’s ruling holds, the state will have to directly pay the school district lawyers’ costs. The charter schools and Grusendorf’s “efficiency intervenors” had no such luck. Here’s how the costs broke down:

Fifteen legislatures and a million years ago (give or take), school districts, parents and their lawyers—oh, the lawyers!—embarked upon an epic quest to wring more money for public education from state lawmakers: to devise an equitable formula for funding Texas’ schools and to provide sustainable support for students in our fast-growing state.

Today, state District Judge John Dietz ruled on Texas’ most recent school finance case—the seventh in 30 years—finding, once again, that our funding system runs afoul of the Texas Constitution.

In the grand scheme of this Texas epic, today’s ruling is a small victory for school districts—the equivalent of the end of a minor battle somewhere in the middle of one of the Lord of the Rings sequels.

It can be hard to cut through all the noise and political spin around school finance. The suit was a complicated one from the start, with a huge cast of players and competing interests. And it’s far from over. From here, the case goes to the Texas Supreme Court—barring a possible stop at an appeals court—but probably not until early next year. If the high court agrees the system needs a fix, it’ll be the Texas Legislature’s job to draft a plan that satisfies the courts.

The stakes are high. Reworking the entire funding system will have a major impact on Texas’ five million students. Since the first Edgewood ISD case in the ’80s, the Legislature has been happy to let the courts force its hand on school finance, so for anyone hoping schools get more resources or smarter funding for the future, this lawsuit is the only hope.

In his initial ruling in February 2013—which he delivered in brief remarks from the bench after months of testimony and detailed statistics—Dietz offered a poetic consideration of the “miracle of education,” and the “civic, altruistic and economic” rationale behind offering every child a free public education.

Lawyers for more than two-thirds of Texas’ school districts argued that the state had cut funding in recent years, even as it required more from them and as enrollment ballooned. Poorer districts, they said, have been forced to max out their local property taxes, and even then couldn’t keep up with property-rich districts.

Of all the testimony he heard, Dietz said, one chart conveyed the problem best: a graph that showed Texas’ spending (adjusted for inflation) remained basically flat while its enrollment grew by 1 million students:

The schools’ lawyers noted that the state’s estimates of what a good education costs—or how to adjust those costs for different students’ needs or different parts of the state—are decades old. As the situation grows more dire, Dietz said in his ruling today, “the state has buried its head in the sand.” It’s time, he said, for elected leaders to decide what kind of education we want and are willing to pay for.

Dietz reopened the case after lawmakers put $3.4 billion back into public education last year (only partially undoing a $5.4 billion cut in 2011), but his decision today is the same as his ruling last year.

Though today’s ruling is just a step in the case’s long journey, it’s been enough to warrant a new round of political posturing. Attorney General Greg Abbott already tried to get Dietz tossed from the case by claiming he’d shown favor to the schools during the trial. Abbott was unsuccessful, but the ordeal supported an impression that Dietz was an activist who’d rule against the state no matter what. Today, his office said it would appeal, while his campaign avoided commenting directly on the case. “Our obligation is to improve education for our children rather than just doubling down on an outdated education system constructed decades ago,” Abbott said in a statement.

Abbott’s rival in the governor’s race, Wendy Davis, called the ruling “a victory for our schools, for the future of our state and for the promise of opportunity that’s at the core of who we are as Texans.” She repeated her long-standing call for Abbott to drop the state’s defense and get busy fixing the system.

The issue isn’t strictly partisan. State Rep. Dan Flynn (R-Van) recently complained to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that while the rural districts in his districts get less than $5,000 per student, “You’ve got schools all over the state that are getting in excess of $10,000. It is not right.”

When lawmakers return to the Capitol next year, they’ll be in basically the same position they were in last session: forced to draft another two-year budget knowing there’s a lower court ruling against them, but with no guidance from the Supreme Court.

Since Texas embarked on its journey of high-stakes testing decades ago, we’ve relied on an imperfect vehicle to get us down the road. Everyone agrees the test is broken—academics measure it, lawmakers complain about the noises it makes, and everyone tries to jiggle the ignition or bang on the hood till something gets better. Every decade or so, we trade in the old test for another and start all over again.

A few days ago, Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams announced he would have to delay a plan to raise the passing score on the state’s standardized tests—the latest layer of duct tape on the bumper.

Texas’ test numbers are always based on a little mathematic sleight-of-hand because every year, a team of state regulators decides how many correct answers on a given test are enough for a passing grade. By setting the bar higher or lower, you can affect the number of students who pass the test. There is a science to this process, and sometimes the science gets thrown out the window.

When the new STAAR test was first unveiled, the plan was that to keep the passing level—or cut score—low at first, then raise it slowly over a number of years. To pass Algebra I, for instance, students had to answer just 37 percent of the questions correctly. But scores on the new STAAR test haven’t risen as fast as the state expected, so according to Williams’ new plan the cut scores will stay put for another year. After that, they’ll rise more slowly than originally planned.

A few days after that announcement, Williams sat before the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday, trying to explain why the pass rate didn’t rise fast enough. What followed was a good reminder of why legislating around test scores is such a bad idea, and why we’re probably doomed to repeat it again next year.

To recap: This test is too easy to pass, and not enough students are passing it, maybe because the test is too hard. Williams offered a few explanations for the stagnating scores. (Over three years, the passing rates on some tests have risen slightly, while others have fallen.) For one thing, he said, STAAR is harder than TAKS, the test it replaced. Texas also has more students with limited English and more students in poverty. And in a set of remarks that will probably dog him for a while, Williams even blamed the teachers: “We haven’t raised the level of instruction significantly enough to meet and match the level of rigor that is required in order to satisfy the passing rate,” he said. “I’m just simply saying that we haven’t jumped high enough in the classroom.”

But Friendswood Republican Sen. Larry Taylor wondered if the students weren’t just being asked to jump too high: “My concern is that the STAAR test is too rigorous compared to what our students’ capabilities are.” Amarillo Republican Kel Seliger wondered if scores were flat because the tests don’t cover the right material.

Leticia Van de Putte took the idea further: “Are we actually measuring what’s relevant? How do parents know … our accountability system is valid?” she wondered. This test, she said, “destroys their creativity, [it] does not allow them to show their whole potential … and it’s not working ’cause you haven’t been able to raise those cut scores.”

But Williams said the quality of the test wasn’t an issue, citing “70 separate validity studies” on STAAR.

After everyone else took a turn grilling Williams on why the pass rate was so low, committee Chair Dan Patrick turned the question completely around. He wanted to know why the passing cutoff for Algebra I is still just 37 percent—well below what’s normally considered good enough for a “C” in class. “Why is the score for the test half of what we expect in the classroom?” he asked.

To recap: This test is too easy to pass, and not enough students are passing it, maybe because the test is too hard.

Presented with little improvement in tests scores, the lawmakers triangulated their way to a different explanation, everyone claimed to have the inside scoop on what’s really happening in classrooms, and once again we seem headed for a legislative session in which lawmakers can’t resist the urge to fix public education by just sort of poking at schools with a stick.

One year after the Legislature cut the number of high school exit tests from 15 to five, a few senators seemed to have an appetite for more changes next year. The contract for STAAR—famously awarded to Pearson for $468 million—is up again for bidding next year, and senators sounded very interested in changing the terms of the deal.

There are so many variables that could explain what’s behind student test scores, it’s very hard to know what they really mean. Williams hinted yesterday at those challenges, but ultimately seemed to settle on the idea that students simply aren’t learning enough. Senators seemed sure the problem was with the test or with Williams.

Van de Putte offered one way out. Sitting just a few seats from Patrick, her rival in the lite guv race, she repeated an idea she recently unveiled in her campaign: to uncouple the test from students’ graduation requirements and rate schools on just a sample of student tests. She wants, according to her own graphic imagery, to “remove the high stakes from the backs of our children.”

Faced with another year of dissatisfaction over test scores, and thousands of students who may not graduate because their test score didn’t rise to meet the state’s bar, and widespread mistrust of a system that always seems to be raising and lowering that bar, she suggested it’s time for a more fundamental change.

“Why,” she asked, “are we still embedded in something that is giving our parents and our students and our educators real pause about trusting this accountability system?”

“I told him that emotions would run very high on the outset and that there were better ways to come into our community,” Quanell X says.

“I would never tell a black man or anyone that he is not welcome in any part of this country, but that’s what they did to us,” Grisham says.

“He needs to do some history homework. He will learn and see why black people don’t like white men coming to the Fifth Ward,” said Quanell X on Thursday. He points to a history of racial unrest in the area dating back decades, of night riders and blacks being told to get inside before sundown.

Well hey, let’s just hold off for now. Maybe let things cool down a little.

McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara says he has been overwhelmed with community support after posting to social media his idea to form a “posse.”

“I’m very excited about it,” he said. “I’m overwhelmed by the response. I really am.”

Deputy Danie Huffman, the Parker County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, said she can’t say enough good things about the Parker County Sheriff’s Posse, which was formed in 1947.

“Posses these days are really not the same as posses years ago,” she said.

Let’s maybe consider this plan in light of the Texas Monthly 1998 story on McNamara’s previous posse, “The Last Posse“:

We don’t hang horse thieves anymore, which is lucky for the men who took Marisa McNamara’s sorrel mare. But as the band of old-time Texas lawmen who hunted them down will proudly tell you, frontier justice is alive and well.

I know, let’s join a militia! Let’s secure the border and give those drug lords what-for!

“What I was told is (the militia groups) are on private property, helping ranchers and owners to keep illegals coming onto or through their property … and there haven’t been any problems,” [State Rep. Doug] Miller told the Express-News. “When (the groups) are coming into an area, they’ve been very forthright, letting (law enforcement) know they were there so there wouldn’t be some type of negative interaction.”

So many places to protect! Where to go first? Let’s just vent our impotent rage for a bit!

Oh, holy crap. If this is a game warden, let’s be game wardens!

PATROLING- AND FROM TEXAS.A PARK AND GAME WARDEN!! WE HERE DONT EVEN MESS WITH THOSE GUYS! UNLIKE FEDS.LIKE TO SHOOT! pic.twitter.com/z2tyrTSWL1

“You now are the tip of the spear in protecting Americans from these cartels and gangs,” Perry said in a visit to Camp Swift near Bastrop, where the Guard is training. “As they are able to get past you, they could be headed to any city, any neighborhood in this country, and they’re spreading their tentacles of crime and fear.”

A 60-year-old Corinth man who shot at officers and firefighters Monday in Far North Dallas espoused anti-government views and claimed to be starting his own nation called “Dougie-stan,” police said Tuesday.

Police say they had found no link between Douglas Lee LeGuin, a Corinth homeowner with no criminal past, and any specific anti-government groups or movements. There was also no clear link between LeGuin and the Far North Dallas house where police said he planned to “occupy” the new nation.

[…]

He also said he was upset with Dallas police for “shooting the mentally handicapped.”

Not that it’s done anything to dampen the political bluster, the border vigilanteism or the enthusiastic firepower parade here in Texas, but this really isn’t the week to play cops.

The New York Times‘ sports section on Sunday featured a long look at Prime Prep Academy, the Deion Sanders-backed basketball powerhouse, reality TV backdrop, academic nightmare and administrative soap opera that also happens to be a publicly funded charter school licensed by the great state of Texas.

The Times‘ Michael Powell offers a blow-by-blow account of Prime Prep’s troubled first two years, much of which will be familiar to folks in Dallas, where the media has rightly made great sport of the school’s foibles. (WFAA reporter and human tackling dummy Brett Shipp is probably staking out the football field from an unmarked van right now.)

But see all the trouble strung together into a single narrative—after trying to fire Sanders, the school director walks out to find her rear windshield smashed; parents sell pizza to students in the cafeteria while phantom school lunches (billed to the USDA) never get served—and you wonder why any parent, so empowered by school choice, would ever choose Prime Prep.

In fact, Powell says, enrollment is up.

The reason is Deion—the man who sweet-talked state officials, lured parents and coaches, promised athletes exposure to top recruiters, and then bridled at the suggestion that his was more properly a supporting role.

It’s a little embarrassing that this school ever opened. Powell writes:

Prime Prep was conceived in celebrity, its charter proposal offering a near satirical turn on edu-speak. The proposal mentioned “our training methods” and a “Leadership Studies Curriculum” without explaining the nature of that special sauce. Students, the proposal noted, would “model traits” such as “responsibility” and “courage.” Students would “become self-actualized.”

Yes, well.

A similar hunch—though you’d never read it in the Times, one might best call it the bullshit alarm—is what prompted the first of a couple pieces I wrote about Prime Prep’s early days. It turned out some of the language in its application was probably plagiarized—it was identical to passages on websites for a suburban Dallas private school and a charter school in Idaho. For evidence of the school’s strong financial prospects, the application promised $186,000 in grants already secured from Wal-Mart, Home Depot and the NFL Network, among others. I called around, and it turned out that had been news to Wal-Mart, Home Depot and the NFL Network.

The secondary headline on the Times‘ story said that Sanders’ school has “come under scrutiny.” But “under scrutiny” is where this school has been for nearly three years. Leslie Minora, then with the Dallas Observer, uncovered a bizarre real estate deal behind Prime Prep’s Fort Worth campus, and accusations that they’d poached another school’s basketball coach and star players threatened to keep Prime Prep out of competition. Through all the trouble and bad press, Sanders always found a way forward. Writes Powell:

We’re accustomed to living in the shadow of the rotten tree that is major college sports. It’s almost refreshing that so many college administrators and coaches have dropped the pretense that recruits are more than underpaid young men and women in shorts, jerseys or shoulder pads.

[…]

Prime Prep offers baroque twists on this American sports tale. It features celebrity culture run amok and shoddy oversight of a charter school.

Over the weekend, Al Jazeera‘s “America Tonight” also took a long look at Prime Prep’s history, and suggested at least a more charitable purpose behind the school: Sanders’ “vision to marry tuition-free academics for underprivileged youths with big-time high school athletics.” But students and parents they interviewed, speaking anonymously, felt cheated by that promise, even if they did get to meet Snoop Dogg and Johnny Manziel:

“There were nights I cried myself to sleep,” [one student] said. “I’m a smart kid, and I knew I could go to college and be a good student. I had dreams of playing at a Division I school, so the fact that dream was taken away from me due to people not doing what they were supposed to do — it sucked.”

If you’re going to explain the problems with Texas’ old system for approving new charter schools—with a majority vote from the elected State Board of Education—Prime Prep would be Exhibit A. (Beaumont Republican David Bradley called Sanders’ team “first class,” and their pitch “flawless.”) As of last fall, we have a new system: charters are vetted by the state’s professional regulators, then the state board can veto any of their picks. It’s not free from the prospect of political influence, but it’s harder for a terrible applicant to sneak through.

Last month, state regulators announced plans to revoke Prime Prep’s charter, most of all because the school lost its eligibility for the federal school lunch program. (Which is what happens when you take $45,000 in federal money for meals you can’t prove you served.)

For now, Prime Prep is in the midst of a lengthy appeals process, during which the school can stay open and keep taking state money. And while the state has investigated the school for much more, the letter announcing its charter revocation only mentions the trouble with the meal program. Sanders has said he’ll pay the school’s lunch bill to get Prime Prep back in the feds’ good graces; its new superintendent, former Dallas ISD trustee Ron Price, says the school is doing just fine under its new management. Call the Prime Prep’s Fort Worth campus today, and the word is that classes will resume as scheduled on August 25.

It’s tempting to read Sunday’s Times story as Prime Prep’s obituary. Maybe that’s what it’ll be. But Sanders’ school has faced long odds for survival before, and come away with an upset every time.

Correction on August 25: The Times writer’s name, Michael Powell, has been corrected throughout the story.

Late last year, a Jasper physical therapist named Alfred Wright disappeared along a remote stretch of East Texas highway in between his scheduled house calls. From the start, Wright’s family was suspicious of local authorities who seemed certain his mysterious disappearance was drug-related; in an area that’s become notorious for racially fueled violence, Wright’s family and others in Jasper’s black community suspected there was more to the story.

In March, the Observerfeatured the story of Wright’s disappearance and the debate, which stretched from the Sabine County courthouse steps to American Idol fan blogs, over the racial implications of how Wright’s case was handled. We reported that authorities had focused their investigation on one 28-year-old Jasper man who could have sold Wright the lethal dose of cocaine later found in his body. Still, complex theories about Wright’s death—that he’d been tortured and mutilated before his death, or forced to ingest the drugs that killed him—spread and grew more intricate in part because authorities wouldn’t say anything so long as the investigation was still open.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office broke that silence at a press conference in Beaumont this morning, announcing that it had indicted that 28-year-old Jasper man, Shane Dewayne Hadnot, for two charges of drug distribution resulting in death, each of which carry a 20-year minimum prison term.

The indictment, which was just unsealed, dates to June 25, and attributes the strange circumstances of Wright’s death to a state of “excited delirium” from the cocaine, methamphetamine and Xanax later found in his system. The document is the most detailed look yet at the official investigation into Wright’s death, while one of Wright’s family members says it only suggests a further official cover-up.

According to the indictment, Hadnot admitted to both Wright’s wife Lauren and to Texas Ranger Danny Young that he’d sold cocaine to Wright on the day he went missing. According to the indictment, Hadnot “admitted that he sold half-grams of cocaine to Wright on a daily basis.” The indictment also quotes daily text messages from Wright to Hadnot beginning on October 8, 2013, to arrange the deals, coded messages like “grammy award” or—on November 7, the day Wright disappeared, “1 gino and a 20 and 3 handles.”

Wright, according to the indictment, was erratic with patients on the afternoon of his disappearance. One of Wright’s patients recalls him showing up late and complaining he was sick; another witness says they spoke to Wright in his or her driveway and “found him extremely disoriented and unable to communicate clearly” before telling Wright to leave.

The document is the most detailed look yet at the official investigation into Wright’s death; Wright’s family says it only suggests a further official cover-up. Once Wright’s body was discovered in late November, the forensic evidence became another point of contention in the case. The Texas Department of Public Safety released an official autopsy that attributed Wright’s death to a drug overdose, but Lee Ann Grossberg, an independent examiner hired by Wright’s family, announced at a press conference that after examining Wright’s body, she had “a high index of suspicion this was a homicide.” That quote helped fuel suspicion that Wright hadn’t simply overdosed, despite Grossberg’s insistence that her investigation wasn’t finsihed. According to the indictment, when Grossberg released her report in May (this time without a press conference), she agreed with the state examiner that Wright’s death was an accidental overdose.

At 3 a.m. Friday morning, Wright’s sister Annilia Wright-Mosley sent an email about the Justice Department’s forthcoming announcement. “I must say I am very numb right now,” she began. “This is what they are doing to uphold the Toxicology report and to validate their claims to [Alfred’s] demise. I am so very disappointing [sic] in our justice system” which, she writes, “recruit[ed] an innocent black man to take the fall.” She says she and her family will be protesting at the federal building in Houston at 3 p.m. this afternoon.

I must say I am very numb right now with the news of what my parents just informed me of that the DOJ (Malcolm Bales out of Beaumont, TX) called and said to them. This is what was stated:

On tomorrow August 8, 2014 They will be inditing a young black man by the name of Shane Hadnot (who suppose to be a drug dealer in Jasper, TX) for the death of my little brother Alfred Wright. They said he is getting charged because he sold the drugs to my brother which caused him to overdose and die. This is what they are doing to uphold the Toxicology report and to validate their claims to his demise. I am so very disappointing in our justice system.

My brother tongue was cut out, eyes gouged out, throat slit, ear cut off, he had missing teeth, missing finger nails, signs of violence and torture (which was confirmed by the second patholigist, Dr. LeeAnn Grossberg in the beginning of the investigation. But after the DOJ got involved she later retracted her claims and became distant to our family which was very suspicious). Later in the investigation my father was finally able to reach her and she informed him that the DOJ had sent reports to her and this is what she based her findings on basically on what the DOJ said. So my mother stated to Malcolm Bales that you mean to tell me that my son slit his own throat, cut his ear off, knock teeth out of his mouth, cut his tongue out, and his response was, It was animal activity.”

This is really sad news to our family, community and to the state of Texas. In 2014 the justice system is yet covers up a HATE CRIME and MODERN DAY LYNCHINHG and recruiting an innocent black man to take the fall (who they cannot prove a connection to Shane being at the scene of the crime). I wanted you all to have this information before they come forward to release the lies and cover up of this case on tomorrow

The Wright Family is asking for your continued prayers and support! We thank you for everything youv’e done to keep the voice of justice alive for Alfred Wright.

Gilbert Stuart's unfinished 1796 Portrait of George Washington. Texas State Board of Education Member Ken Mercer says the College Board is trying to completely un-finish the job.

Light the lanterns and load the muskets—the liberals are coming for our history again.

To veterans of the State Board of Education’s Culture Wars of 2010, the Great CSCOPE Panic of 2013 or the Common Core Purity Tests of 2014—”You use Common Core, you go to jail,” goes the timeless refrain—it will come as little surprise to learn that a new front has opened in the battle for the minds of our children and the story of our nation. Those hapless school administrators have wheeled yet another Trojan horse through the gates.

Newcomers to this sort of thing, however, may be stumped by the growing backlash to the news that Advanced Placement U.S. History has been revised.

As part of a general overhaul of nearly three dozen AP tests—which cover a broad range of subjects and let high-scoring high school students earn college credit—the College Board has released details of the new AP U.S. History test to be given this spring. The new test will require more conceptual thinking from students, big-picture explanations of trends and connections over time, meant to more closely mimic the demands students would face in a college course. “To this end,” according to a College Board announcement, “the curriculum framework presents required course content conceptually, allowing teachers the freedom to present that content in a variety of ways.”

The transition has been years in the making. In October 2012, the College Board released a framework for the new test, a 98-page list of the concepts with which students should be familiar. In the past, it had only issued a five-page outline.

On July 8 of this year, State Board of Education member Ken Mercer, a San Antonio Republican, answered the new framework with a call to arms. He began:

On July 4th, we witnessed nationwide patriotism honoring our Founding Fathers and the sacrifices of our courageous men and women in uniform. This must have annoyed David Coleman, the chief architect of the controversial Common Core national standards, and many of his College Board (CB) colleagues.

Coleman co-wrote the English standards for the Common Core initiative, before joining the College Board as president in 2012. For some veterans of the anti-Common Core fight, Coleman’s presence at the College Board is proof enough that AP courses have been “infiltrated” by the collectivist dogma of the nationwide school standards. That would be especially nefarious in Texas, which never adopted the Common Core—proof that no one is safe from the plot to nationalize America’s schools.

And just how much does the College Board hate America? Mercer counts the ways. “In the period of the American Revolution up to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, almost every Founding Father is omitted – no Jefferson, Adams, Madison, or Franklin,” he writes.

The lessons on World War II omit “The Greatest Generation,” Truman, Hitler, D-Day, Midway, the Battle of the Bulge, and every military commander including Dwight Eisenhower. Inexplicably, Nazi atrocities against Jews and other groups are “not required.” The CB concludes its treatment of WWII with this blunt statement: “The decision to drop the atomic bomb raised questions about American values.”

For today’s patriots, this is our Valley Forge and our D-Day—this is the Revolution of 2014! Of course, omitting names, dates and places is kind of the point. “Allowing teachers the freedom” to teach how they want, or how their states require them to teach, is what the new AP framework is about. Texas fought hard over who should or shouldn’t have a place in its social studies standards, and every other state has a list of its own. Avoiding a Hitler reference is hard enough on YouTube’s comment threads; nobody is seriously suggesting he should be left out of a lesson on World War II.

Mercer references “lessons on World War II,” but there are no lessons at all in this framework, just a list of big-picture ideas students should consider. Teachers are the ones who tell students, with the benefit of a course syllabus, textbook and their state’s history standards, which historical figures, dates and places are crucial to explaining the past. Mercer either completely misunderstands what’s happening here, or he’s stirring the fear-fire’s embers to remind us there’s a war on.

“For today’s patriots,” Mercer writes, “this is our Valley Forge and our D-Day – this is the Revolution of 2014!”

SBOE member Ken Mercer (R-San Antonio)

That was almost a month ago. Last night, Mercer joined a nationwide conference call to reissue his plea, joined by two of the sources he refers to in his letter: Larry Krieger, a retired history teacher and author of test prep books like the AP® U.S. Government & Politics Crash Course, and Jane Robbins of the Washington-based American Principles Project. The call was hosted by Concerned Women of America, a nationwide group in Georgia, and promoted to groups in Texas and all over the country, from Idaho to Florida. When I called in at the beginning of the conversation, an automated voice told me I was the 317th caller.

Krieger recalled his shock at seeing everyone the new framework left out—even “my own personal hero George Washington.” But worse than the omissions, Krieger said, were the personal slights against our Founding Fathers. Reading the framework, Krieger says:

I saw a consistently negative view of American history that highlights oppressors and exploiters. Now instead of striving to build a city on a hill, according to the framework, our nation’s founders are portrayed as bigots who, quote, “developed a belief in white superiority.” End quote. That was in turn derived from quote, “A strong belief in British racial and cultural superiority” and that of course led to, quote, “creation of a rigid racial hierarchy.”

[…]

Actually, the theme of oppression and conflict continues. Later on I turned to Manifest Destiny. Now, you were probably taught, I was taught and I also taught, that Manifest Destiny was the belief that America had the mission to spread democratic democracy and new technology across the continent. Well, sorry, on page 44 the framework says, quote, “the idea of Manifest Destiny was built on a belief of white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority.”

Mercer chimed in later: “If this is what our university professors believe to be good U.S. history, then this document is an indictment of our colleges and universities.” From Robbins, and questions from other callers, came a broad suggestion that parents ought to quit letting big outside groups dictate what their children are taught. This time around, the most rousing call to action came from Krieger:

The time has really come to push back. Rosa Parks said ‘no’ and she galvanized the civil rights movement. Ronald Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Now I think it’s time for us to stand up, push back to the College Board and say no.

Mercer either completely misunderstands what’s happening here, or he’s stirring the fear-fire’s embers to remind us there’s a war on. Krieger, like Mercer, wants the College Board to delay its implementation of the new test, so our young Americans won’t grow up looking too harshly on our complicated past. College Board vice president Trevor Packer has suggested Krieger’s motivations are more cynical: “As someone deeply invested in the test preparation industry, Krieger cannot be expected to welcome the way that AP courses and exams are being revised to emphasize inquiry and depth at the expense of memorization.”

During the state board’s meeting in mid-July, SBOE chair Barbara Cargill made time for complaints about the framework, and discussion about keeping it out of Texas schools—a measure that, it seems, would put Texas’ 46,000 AP test-takers at a distinct disadvantage. After hours of testimony from upset patriots—some dressed in period costumes—a College Board official named Debbie Pennington took the mic to answer questions.

She reiterated that there’s no Common Core in the AP history standards, and that the framework really is just a framework—not, say, a denial that the Holocaust happened—and Pennington fielded a question from Dallas Democrat Mavis Knight: What should we make of this scandal? Is Mercer’s “Revolution of 2014″ fact or fiction?

“I love listening to this stuff,” Pennington replied. “This is what the First Amendment, this is what this body is all about.”

The Latino Coalition for Educational Equity's press conference outside the Texas Senate in February 2013. Patricia Lopez, who led research on the new education survey, is third from left.

In February 2013, while Texas lawmakers kicked around major changes to public eduction, a handful of Latino activists and educators banded together outside the Senate chamber to send a message that they were getting left out. After weeks of committee hearings dominated by business groups and mostly white parents and students, this super-group of advocates calling itself the Latino Coalition for Educational Equality united to say they’d had enough.

New graduation requirements were in the works, threatening a return to Texas’ old system of “tracking” Hispanic students into vocational programs instead of college prep. In budget talks, lawmakers were considering how much money to budget for schools. And even when they considered the fast-growing proportion of Hispanic students, few legislators consulted with the state’s wealth of Latino education experts. Hispanic students appeared in talking points mostly as test scores or arguments for more funding. But by the close of the session, the Latino coalition’s pleas did little to change the conversation.

So, just five months from another Lege session, Hispanic groups want to change that dynamic for good. During the 2015 session Hispanic students will make up a clear majority of Texas’ schoolchildren, and Latino advocates say it’s time their voices were heard.

To that end, the band got back together after the session ended to develop a unified agenda for 2015. Led by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus and the Senate Hispanic Caucus, a coalition of Latino groups met for a summit last October, split their effort into areas like health care, immigration and civic engagement, and gathered ideas from a broad selection of Latino advocates around the state. Organizers say the education study alone—with 70 groups and interviews with 120 bilingual teachers—is the most far-reaching survey of Latino and Latina groups in memory.

“The Latino community, we’re always talked about like we don’t vote, we don’t show up, and we constantly have to push back on dominant stereotypes,” says Patricia Lopez, the former University of Texas researcher who ran the education survey. “We have to be out there. These organizations are doing a lot of work that’s off the grid, not in the spotlight.”

The survey results include a mix of big needs, like improving access to college, and small-bore policy ideas—like new programs to unite schools with their neighborhoods—that the groups will start shopping around the Capitol soon. They’re counting on Hispanic caucuses in the House and Senate, led by Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio) and Sen. Jose Rodriguez (D-El Paso), to push these issues when the Lege returns.

School finance is, by far, the biggest priority the groups identified, and the report summary echoes a lot of what the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) has argued in its piece of the everlasting school finance lawsuit: that Texas’ school funding is based on what lawmakers want to spend, not what a quality education actually costs, and that cuts in school funding have meant scaling back bilingual education programs.

Interestingly, the teachers surveyed here are all bilingual teachers—either working in school districts or enrolled in teacher prep programs—and they were far more concerned with teacher quality, school accountability and access to books than school funding. Lopez says that’s a reflection of their more direct interaction with classrooms. “School finance obviously is intertwined in every issue,” she says. “You can’t advocate for more materials and more appropriate materials or resources without it being a school finance issue.”

Teachers and advocates also agreed, according to the report, that “increasing the number of well-prepared Latina/o teachers” should be a top priority—a finding that squares with research suggesting that Hispanic teachers tend to stay in high-needs schools longer, bringing stability to classrooms as well as a cultural relevancy that helps students relate to lessons.

It’s also worth noting what’s not listed among the top priorities: charter school chains, vouchers and full-time online schools, which the report dismisses as “privatization experiment efforts” that siphon money away from the schools most kids attend. In other words, if you ask Latino teachers and activists—and not Sen. Dan Patrick—there are plenty of “civil rights issues of our time” more pressing than school choice.

It’s not that teachers and advocates were opposed to charter schools or any particular group of reformers, Lopez says, just those “who come in who have no historical participation in a community, and see it as a potential market.”